By the time a child growing up in a low-income family celebrates his fourth birthday, he will have heard thirty million fewer words than his peers from higher income families. Providence Talks is the first city-wide effort to close this word-gapand ensure that every child enters kindergarten ready to excel.

From the moment your child is born, talking to your baby helps build their brain and prepare them for school. Providence Talks aims to empower families with the additional tools and resources necessary to help build their children’s vocabularies from day one.

Providence Talks currently engages in three separate program models: Home Visiting, Playgroup, and Professional Development. Each model is designed to meet the needs of different types of families. See our RESOURCES page for additional information and examples of curricula.

Replication across the United States is a key goal for Providence Talks. We are committed to assisting organizations and cities who wish to replicate either all or parts of the individual PT program models. See our REPLICATION page for more information.

Since our full launch in 2015, Providence Talks has acquired an extensive amount of data and research demonstrating our various program models' efficacy, as well as data about the parents and families we're serving in the community. Please see our Research or Open Data Portal pages for more information.

About Providence Talks

Providence Talks proposes to do something never before attempted at the municipal level: to intervene at a critically early age, from birth to age three, to close the “30 million word gap” at a city-wide scale and ensure that every child in Providence enters a kindergarten classroom ready to achieve at extraordinary levels.